The Contemporary Middle East. A Documentary History

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General Syrian Congress and the King-Crane Commission


DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT


Deliberations at the Paris peace conference early in 1919 made clear the fundamen-
tally different views of Britain and France, the two main European Allies of World
War I, and the United States on how to approach the former lands of the soon-to-be
defunct Ottoman Empire. The British and French were determined to carry through
with their wartime plans to divide much of the Middle East between themselves, cre-
ating virtual colonies. President Woodrow Wilson earnestly hoped to promote his
dream of “self-determination” for all the world’s nationalities, which would have meant
the end of all forms of European colonialism.
British ambivalence about giving France responsibility for Syria complicated the
deal. Prime Minister David Lloyd George appeared, at times, to want Syria for Brit-
ain. Wilson suggested, to the apparent annoyance of the Europeans, that the Arabs of
Syria should be asked for their views on the matter. Wilson then appointed Henry C.
King, the president of Oberlin College in Ohio, and Charles R. Crane, a Chicago
businessman, as a “commission” to look into the matter. In June 1919, the two men
traveled to Damascus, where Amir Faisal (temporarily) held power. With British sup-
port, his government arranged for the convocation of the General Syrian Congress,
consisting of notables from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, to present a unified front
to the U.S. delegation. The congress was far from representative of the broad spec-
trum of opinion in Greater Syria and was intended to bolster Faisal’s claim as the
region’s new ruler.
Meeting on July 2, the congress adopted a declaration calling for Syria (including
Lebanon and Palestine) to be a fully independent “democratic civil constitutional
monarchy.” If the participants at the Paris peace conference prohibited such an out-
come, the declaration said, the United States should be entrusted with providing the
“technical and economic assistance” to guide Syria to independence. The declaration
rejected French rule of Syria “under any circumstances” and opposed Zionist plans to
establish a Jewish home in Palestine.
King and Crane included this declaration in their report to Wilson on August 29,
1919, and they cited it as supporting their own proposal for the United States, rather
than France, to supervise Syria for a limited period of time. The commissioners also
opposed what they called the “extreme Zionist program” for a Jewish national home
in Palestine. According to most accounts, Wilson never saw the King-Crane Com-
mission report, which was filed away and played no role in subsequent peace confer-
ence negotiations. The full report was first made public in 1922 by Editor and Pub-
lisher,a U.S. newspaper industry trade magazine. Along with the Faisal-Weizmann
Agreement earlier in 1919, the King-Crane Commission report and the declaration of
the General Syrian Congress stand as historical curiosities demonstrating the views of
some of those who sought to influence the course of events in the Middle East. The


20 FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EAST

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